Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
A man set himself afire along with wife and son in a moving car on Tuesday afternoon, reportedly due to financial crisis. While the man was charred to death, his wife and son sustained serious burns in the familicide pact. The incident took place near Khapri Punarvasan area under jurisdiction of Beltarodi police station area, said the officials who attended the spot. The deceased was identified as Ramraj Gopalkrishna Bhat (58), a resident of Jaitala. His wife Sangita (55) and son Nandan (30) have sustained around 50 per cent burn injuries. Ramraj was owner of a factory in the MIDC Hingna area and Nandan was an engineering graduate, according to police. A police official said, it seems to well-planned murder-cum-suicide case. Ramraj was under sever financial stress while Nandan too was unemployed. The worrisome financial situation led to regular arguments between the father and the son and the tension finally seems to have driven Ramraj to the ghastly idea, he sai...